In message <199605030425.XAA05924@primus.paranoia.com>, Bill Stewart writes:

...

Although I could probably hack up "catblock" to do the job, and use a line of the form dump -0uBf ... | symmetric_cipher | catblock blockfactor > /dev/tape

Yup [agrees on cmdline] You don't need to write "catblock", though - there's the "dd" command designed for just such applications... Newer versions may handle multiple tapes a bit better.

Hmm, I've got this a few times from people and I just wanted to clear up a few points. 1) BSD dd doesn't treat EOT specially: /* ... If a partial write, and it's a character device, just warn. If a tape device, quit. ... */ GNU dd (from what I remember) doesn't, either. 2) "dd" will only work safely across all tape types and all size pipes using the degenerate form "dd ibs=1 obs=(your_bf_here) conv=sync ...". I'll hack up catblock today. Who says we don't code :)